The initiative has the broad goal of ensuring America’s active duty and reserve military and civilian defense agencies are able to attract and retain the nation’s best in serving the country.

Secretary Carter outlined the Force of the Future initiatives in aspeech at the George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs.

Among the initiatives announced by the Secretary will be an emphasis ensuring that troops and civilians have diverse developmental experiences, including outside of government, broadening career opportunities, improving talent management processes, fostering entrepreneurial and innovative thinking inside the organization with dedicated programs, establishing a Chief Recruiting Officer for senior level hires, and others.

While opting to not pursue full scale personnel reform at the first stage of Force of the Future, several proposals are targeted towards both military and civilian workforce management and development. Those proposals were summarized in a departmentalmemo.

“These first initiatives are just the beginning of a broad-based effort to maintain our competitive edge in our military and civilian forces,” Carter wrote in the memo, noting that additional initiatives will be announced as they are ready for execution.